Mystery of The Sleeping Car Express

Rating:
Summary: A mystery that remains a mystery.
Review: Having read all Freeman Wills Crofts's detective fiction at one time or another and reviewed most of it enthusiastically, I regret that there is not much to be said in favor of his short stories. The story that bears this book's title is a big disappointment. Famed for his knowledge of the ins and outs of early C20th trains, timetables, engineering, and plot structure in his novels, he might be expected to construct a brilliant little piece under the title "Mystery of the Sleeping Car Express". Instead he delivers a scrappy narrative, adds a sketch plan that beggars comprehension, and leaves at least one reader feeling that the mystery of the sleeping car express remains a mystery. This was Crofts' first short story, written in 1921. As with his first Inspector French novel, "Inspector French's Greatest Case", 1926, he unfortunately chose a title that in the event produced disappointment.

Crofts seemed to need a full length novel to display his powers best: the patient unraveling of the mystery, and the painstaking checking, theorizing and testing that led to the solution. There is one story in this collection, however, that is a total success. Written in 1933, it is titled "The Level Crossing". It, rather than the title story in this collection, well deserves inclusion in various "railway" story anthologies, and makes this book well worth the purchase price.